Maintaining your weight while on a cruise

Cruises can be a diet killer if you aren’t careful. Photo from Flickr: KLGreenNYC

Last week, I wandered onto a cruise ship with 6 friends for a fun five-day trip to Cozumel and Progresso, Mexico. Not too long after we boarded, one of my good friends announced that she fully planned to walk off of the ship the same weight as she got on. I hadn’t thought much about it (lazy me), but I decided to join her on this mission. Both of us walked off that cruise ship without gaining any weight. In fact, she maintained her weight perfectly, I came back .2 pounds less.

We rock!!!!! Ok anyway, here’s how maintained our weight on the cruise:

Exercise

We both agreed that we couldn’t take the elevator and we only broke that rule once (5 flights of stairs in ridiculously high heels for formal night sounded dangerous). My legs were on fire quite a bit due to this rule.

I worked out four out of the five days. I did weights twice and cardio twice, each for about an hour.

I incorporated exercise into my excursions. I climbed up and down the Mayan Ruins, swam around for a while in a cenote, snorkeled and played volleyball on the beach, etc. I rested too, but I tried to add additional “steps” to my day.

Diet

My friend’s other rule was that she was just going to sample, not eat, the rich foods. So, we tried a bit of everything, but we only tried a LITTLE (like two bites) of pretty much everything rich/unhealthy.

We took fruit and cereal boxes with us for snacks between meals. We added our protein to keep us full by incorporating cheese and/or protein powder into our snacks.

I memorized when different food places closed and planned accordingly. So, for example, if my next snack was at 10 p.m., I was at the buffet line right before it closed at 9:30 p.m. to make myself a plate of fresh fruit and cheese.

It wasn’t long into our cruise before I started craving vegetables (I kid you not), so I started filling a salad bowl with cucumbers and carrots (not the iceberg lettuce, that stuff is worthless) and took it back to my room for snacks.

They also had a veggie stick snack on the free room service menu, so i ordered that about once a day.

A few days in, I started ordering the side of steamed vegetables as my appetizer vs. the fried whatever was on the menu that day.

I avoided desserts. I wasn’t perfect, but I stayed FAR FAR away from the dessert bar and I never once touched the round-the-clock ice cream station. Mostly, I’d just ask a friend if I could take ONE BITE of whatever dessert they were having and stop at that.

I did order the melted chocolate cake the last night and took a few bites and then asked our waiter to take it away ASAP (yes, I felt bad wasting food).

The day of our Mayan excursion, we weren’t going to get lunch because we were to be back by 1, but that’s still a long time, so we ordered peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, put them in plastic bags we’d brought, and took them with us so we’d have a decently healthy snack.

I still carried protein bars with me and ate those if they were the healthiest option available.